


Stay

by DKNC



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (at least mostly I think), Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-13 23:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1244677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DKNC/pseuds/DKNC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Catelyn asked Ned to stay.</p><p>And the one time he asked it of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ONE

ONE

Catelyn could still feel her heart beating wildly against her rib cage, and her breathing had yet to slow to its normal rate when her husband pulled himself away from her and sat up. She watched him turn his back to her and swing his legs over the side of the bed. He would sit there in silence for a few moments, she knew. He would sit there almost as if he were waiting for something that she did not know how to give him or trying to find words that would not come, and then he would sigh and walk to the chair where he had carefully laid his clothes before coming to join his body to hers in her bed.

She enjoyed his attentions in her bed. She’d admitted that to herself long ago. If she were being perfectly honest with herself, she had found pleasure in his touch before he’d ever left her at Riverrun--not that first night. Gods, no. That had been awkward and frightening and even painful, although not nearly so painful as she’d been led to believe it would be. And Ned had been so concerned with her own discomfort that she didn’t think he’d truly enjoyed himself all that much on that first night, either. Oh, he’d found his completion and spilled his seed within her, and at the time, she’d thought that was all the pleasure a man desired--and that it was always the same for them. She’d certainly learned differently now, of course, and she knew just where and how to touch him to drive him mad. She’d first begun to understand that bedding with a man was not a simple, repetitive task that was always accomplished in the same manner on their last couple nights in Riverrun when he’d become more daring and used his hands and mouth to make her feel like she was coming apart in the most excruciatingly pleasurable way she could ever imagine. In the more than a year she’d lived with him in Winterfell now, they’d both learned a great deal about pleasing each other in this bedchamber, and he came to her often. It was not uncommon for him to come two or even three nights in a row, but he never stayed.

They’d slept whole nights together in Riverrun for they’d been given only the one bedchamber on their wedding night, and it had seemed to her an insult to her new husband had she chosen to return to the rooms she’d shared with Lysa since childhood before he left for war. It had only been a fortnight, after all. She’d told herself she could certainly stand to share a bed with this solemn stranger for that length of time, particularly when she’d already done her duty and shared her body with him.

Oddly enough, she’d found sleeping beside him somewhat comforting then. She’d opened her eyes that first morning to find him lying on his side, propped up on one elbow looking at her with an unguarded expression. As soon as he’d realized she was awake, the polite but nearly frozen expression that always guarded his thoughts and emotions slipped back into place, but for a moment she thought she’d seen a bit of tenderness, along with curiosity, and even something that looked like hope. The fingers of his free hand had been wound into her hair, and he’d apologized quickly for that, jerking his hand back away from her as if the flame colored strands had actually burned him. On the subsequent nights, she would wake sometimes and watch him sleep, marveling at how young and even sort of handsome his face looked when it wasn’t set in a hard mask that covered his grief and worry. She suspected he watched her sleep during those nights as well, but she never caught him at it after that first morning.

But now, after so many times together in her bed here at Winterfell that she knew his body almost as well as she knew her own, he had not slept beside her once. And for that, she blamed the bastard. Or rather the bastard’s mother. She still felt the terrible bitterness when she thought upon her arrival here with Robb, prepared to begin her new life, determined to be a true Lady of the North although she’d shivered almost the entire ride once they’d gotten north of The Neck. She’d proudly presented her lord husband with his son and heir--her perfect, beautiful, auburn-curled, blue-eyed babe only to learn that he’d already installed his bastard here--a boy who looked so like him, she could almost imagine he had no mother and had simply sprung fully formed somehow from Eddard Stark alone. Yet, he did have a mother, of course--the woman Ned would not name.

She'd asked the name only once. She’d thought he was going to stay in her room that night. They had somehow found their way past the first bitter recriminations at the bastard’s existence and seemingly non-negotiable presence at Winterfell, and learned not only to come together in her bed with racing hearts and heated touches, but with quiet conversations in his solar and shared smiles at table in the Great Hall. They’d accomplished what she’d feared they never could--and reached a certain level of comfort she’d thought the bastard’s presence had made impossible. And one night, after they’d finished, rather than sitting up and turning away from her, he’d simply rolled to his back, and pulled her against him. She had felt safe somehow, curled against his hard, strong body in the dark, feeling his seed within her, listening to his breathing as he wound a strand of her hair around his finger just as he had done while she slept on that long ago morning at Riverrun. And feeling safe, she had asked him. She had asked him if the boy’s mother was truly Ashara Dayne as the servants whispered.

But she had been wrong. She was not safe at all. He had shouted at her as he never had before or since. He had nearly leapt from her bed as if he could not stand to be touching her. His normally cool grey eyes had blazed with such ferocious anger, she’d honestly feared briefly that he might hit her. But once she’d told him where she’d heard the name and given her word that she would never ask about the bastard’s mother again, that blaze had gone out, and ice had replaced it.

It had been a long time after that before he came to her again, and in truth, she wasn’t certain she wanted him there even when he did return, but she was his lady wife, and she would do her duty. She would not deny her lord husband her body or the children she could bear him. It had taken longer after that, to bridge the chasm between them. She’d realized gradually that he felt tremendous guilt for frightening her that night. He was not a cruel man. She couldn’t recall a single other instance of him having even raised his voice to her. He was almost too careful of her. Too carefully cool in his courtesy to be truly warm. Yet time had eventually thawed him once more, just as time allowed her to open herself to him once again.

She’d begun to offer small kindnesses such as seeing that his favorite foods were served when she knew him to be out of sorts about something or stitching the direwolf she’d learned to sew so beautifully during her long betrothal to Brandon on any number of items for him. He’d started asking her opinion on a great number of matters and actually listening to what she had to say, much like her father had done at Riverrun. And he’d built her a sept. She’d cried the day he’d taken her to see it and she’d realized that it wasn’t a new storage building at all, but a home for her gods--the gods that she alone in Winterfell prayed to. That had melted away nearly all the resentment she still harbored against her husband.

She would never accept the boy. How could she when Ned insisted upon raising him as if he were a true Stark, raising him as if he were Robb’s true brother, entitled to things that were Robb’s? The boy was a threat, and if her husband refused to acknowledge that fact, she would not. She would protect her son from anyone who might lay false claim to what was his by rights, even if that meant protecting him from this little dark haired boy with her husband’s face. But for all her resentment of the boy’s presence here, and the residual anger she still occasionally felt toward her husband for insisting upon it, she could not deny that Ned had a truly good, sweet heart, and that the gods had given her a great deal more than she’d hoped for in a husband.

If only she could drive the nameless woman from his heart. For the more she’d come to care for Ned, the more it bothered her that he had no desire to stay with her through the night--to wake up with her, with the shy smiles and hesitant touches they had known on those last mornings at Riverrun. And the cause had to be the bastard’s mother. He had lain with the woman not long after he left Riverrun for the boy was nearly of an age with Robb. And when he had lain with her, whatever tiny seed of affection had been planted between her husband and herself during that fortnight when they’d made Robb had been seemingly strangled by whatever he had found with his lover.

She’d considered asking him to stay with her on a few occasions, when their lovemaking had been especially tender or he had lingered longer than usual in his silent seated position on her bed, but she never did. It wasn’t safe. For all that they were much closer now in every way than they ever had been, she still never asked him for anything that required him to give her anything of himself that he might wish to withhold. She had not forgotten that terrible night. And she was a Tully, the eldest daughter of the Lord Paramount of the Trident. She did not beg for favors. She would build her family here, act with honor in all of her dealings with these people, and never hesitate to do her duty by her lord husband. But she would not ask for what he couldn’t give her. She was too proud for that. And when she was being honest with herself, she would admit she was too frightened as well. She didn’t truly want to know without doubt that the bounds of Ned’s affection for her would always be more limited than she wished.

So she never asked him to stay.

She watched him on this night, his muscular back looking like marble in the moonlight, and she waited for the sigh. Instead, he turned to look at her.

“I am very glad of your news, my lady,” he said softly.

His voice was cool and the words formal, but she knew him well enough now to recognize the depth of feeling there. She smiled up at him from where she lay beneath the furs, so much colder for his warmth having been taken from her than she would have been had she not had his body against hers in the first place. “I am glad it pleases you, my lord. I would fill your castle with sons if the gods grant them.”

He laughed then, a low rumbling sound that she’d learned to love. “Or perhaps a daughter this time,” he said, smiling at her. “Beautiful like her mother.”

Catelyn almost frowned at that. Robb looked enough like her. She would prefer another son for the security of Winterfell’s line of inheritance, but boy or girl, she would like to give her husband a child he could see himself in.

“You are quite certain?” he asked for at least the fiftieth time since she’d told him three days ago, and she laughed at him.

“Of course, I am. I waited until I’d missed two moonbloods to tell you, my lord. And I’ve had Maester Luwin see me. He thinks I’m nearly three moons along, and assures me all is well with the babe and myself.” She’d said all this to him before, but he seemed to like hearing it repeated. He must truly be glad of the babe if it prompted him to break from his normal silent leavetaking of her.

The tender smile which lingered on his face made her brave, and she found a question on her lips. She would not ask him to stay. Not that. But, perhaps he could answer another question without so much risk.

“Why did you come tonight, Ned?” she asked softly. His preferred version of his given name came to her lips far easier than it once had, but she still had to stop herself from calling him ‘my lord’ because she did not want this question to sound formal in the least.

His face became grave at once. “Maester Luwin assured me it was quite safe, Cat. I would never do anything to put you or our babe at risk.”

She felt herself blush at the idea that Ned and the maester had such a conversation, but in truth, she had asked the maester the same question. “I . . .I know that, my lord. It’s only that . . .well, now that I am with child, there is no . . .you needn’t feel . . .I mean, I thought perhaps you would not wish to come while there is no purpose in it,” she finally managed to blurt out.

“No purpose?” His lord’s face melted away entirely to a look of complete incredulity. “Catelyn, I was unaware that you thought I came to your chambers only in order to get you with child, my lady. I . . .I come to you because I want to. I enjoy sharing your bed.” He swallowed rather uncomfortably. “I had thought that you did, too. But if you wish me to cease . . .”

“No!” she interrupted. The panicked, high-pitched protest caused her to blush even more, and she prayed that the relative darkness hid the color from her husband. “I do not want you to cease anything. I mean . . .the maester said it is safe the entire time--even when the babe is quite well grown and near time to deliver.”

The smile spread across his face slowly then, and she knew she had given herself away. “It would appear I am not the only one who had questions for the good maester,” he said with a hint of teasing in his voice.

“You . . .you are not the only one who enjoys what we do in my bed, my lord,” she said boldly looking him in the eye.

He laughed then and reached out to touch her hair. “Ah, Cat! You are a wonder to me.”

The words seemed to tumble from his lips of their own accord and as they lodged in her heart, she heard a single word escape unbidden from her own lips.

“Stay.”

“What?” He drew his had back, and his expression grew serious, and she could have torn out her tongue for chasing his laughter away by asking for too much.

“I . . .nothing, my lord. It was a foolish thought. It’s no matter.”

“Cat . . .” he said slowly, looking at her with those grey eyes that seemed to see too much at times. “Do you wish me to stay the night with you, my lady?”

“I wish you to do as you please, my lord,” she said. “You are welcome in my bed at all times.”

“Stop it,” he said, and he sounded almost angry. She wasn’t frightened of him, not truly, but some shadow of the one terrible time she had been must have shown on her face because his stern face suddenly crumbled into an expression of remorse. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said quickly. “I should never speak harshly to you. You are the one person in all my life who deserves harsh words the least.”

“It is all right, my lord. I shouldn’t have asked you to . . .”

“Catelyn,” he interrupted as gently as possible. “You may ask anything of me at any time.”

 _I can never ask you the name of the bastard’s mother,_ she thought bitterly. _You had me give you my promise._ But he was looking at her tenderly, his face as open as she had ever seen it. _Perhaps I can ask you for more than I do, though._

“I only thought that you might like to stay just awhile," she said, choosing her words carefully. "I know my room is too hot for you, and you don’t like to stay with me after . . . but . . .”

“My gods,” he swore softly.

“What?” she asked, fearful that she’d upset him.

He sighed and reached out to take her hand. “You deserve no harsh words, my lady, but you deserve better than a husband who too often has no words at all.” He smiled at her, but it was a rather sad smile. “I do sometimes think this room is too hot,” he said, “but that matters little to me because you are in it, and I would suffer more than a bit of extra heat to be near you.”

She wasn’t entirely certain she had heard him correctly, so she simply lay still and waited to hear if he would say more.

“I have long wanted to sleep beside you, Cat. But only if you truly wish it. I know your words as well as you do, my lady. Family, Duty, Honor. You would not turn me away even if the idea of my encroaching upon your sleep is abhorrent you.” He took a deep breath and looked directly into her eyes. “I am blessed beyond measure to have a wife who lives so truly by those words, Cat, but sometimes I would like to think that what passes between us is more than duty.” He frowned then, but it wasn’t at her. She knew him well enough to recognize this frown as the one that accompanied his silences when he didn’t have the words he wanted, so she simply waited out his silence again. “I would have you . . .have some things only because you want them. You deserve things that you want, my lady.”

Her husband was not a sentimental man, and she tried hard to blink back the tears that filled her eyes at his words. “I do want it, my lord.”

“What do you want, Cat?” he whispered.

“Stay with me, Ned,” she whispered back, pushing her fears away. “I want you to stay.”

He smiled at her and lay back down, pulling her over to him and pillowing her head on his chest. “As long as you wish me to be here, my lady, I will stay.”

Catelyn closed her eyes and listened to the sound of her husband’s good, sweet heart beating steadily beneath her, and her own heart felt immeasurably lighter as she allowed herself to believe that she would now fall asleep listening to its comforting rhythm for many, many nights to come.


	2. Two

TWO

He was so still and so pale. Often, Catelyn found herself holding her own breath in order to make herself still and quiet enough to hear the tiny hiss of air and see the barely discernible rise and fall of her son’s chest marking the shallow breaths with which he clung to life.

She was afraid to look away even for a moment, fearing that whatever moment she might choose to do so would be the one in which those shallow breaths stopped, fearing that her baby would cross from this world to the next alone, without her there to kiss his sweet brow and hold his little hand.

That little hand was so cold. His fingers felt like ice in her hand. _Ice._ The word reminded her of Ned’s greatsword. It also reminded her of her husband’s grey eyes when he’d told her that the king could not delay his departure from Winterfell any longer.

“The Others take the king,” she muttered under her breath in the room which was empty save Bran and herself. “And the Others take you, too, Eddard Stark if you leave us now.” She bit her lip so hard, she thought she might draw blood as she shut her eyes tightly against the tears that spilled down her cheeks anyway. She’d have thought she had no tears left by now, but still they came.

She rubbed her sleeve roughly across her eyes and could feel they were still swollen from the tears she’d cried after the bastard left. Or had she begun crying before he left? She couldn’t remember. _It should have been you,_ she had said to him. She remembered that, and she remembered his face after she’d said it, too. _Gods, what a cold and heartless thing to say! When did I_ _become as cold as the North?_ She squeezed Bran’s cold fingers again, but of course, he did not respond to her. _Ice. Bran’s_ _fingers. Ned’s sword. Jon Snow’s eyes. My heart. All of us have become ice._

She thought the men of the Night’s Watch had ridden out already. There had been a great commotion in the yard, and then it had grown quieter for some time, but the noise had increased again. She cared nothing for Jon Snow’s departure, but the increasing noise from outside now likely meant the king’s party would be departing soon. Ned had asked her to come down to the yard and see them off. He’d said the girls needed her there. _I can’t, Ned. Don’t you understand? I can’t leave him. I can’t let him die alone. How can you leave him? How can you leave us now?_

He would be bringing the girls here before they left, she knew. How was she to let go of them now? They couldn’t be apart now. Why couldn’t Ned see that? The pack survives. How many times had she heard him say that, and yet he would now scatter their pack and leave them vulnerable. _And throw my own words at me as he does it_. That was a bitter pill for she knew she had played a significant role in Ned’s agreeing to go with Robert in the first place.

She’d been frightened by the direwolf dead in the snow of the stag’s antler. She’d not been able to see past the danger of defying a king who was most certainly no longer the friend Ned remembered. And Lysa’s letter had terrified her.

The dead direwolf still frightened her, but now she feared she had been wrong about the meaning of the sign. Her selfish prayers for Bran had certainly been all wrong, and she now feared in her very soul she had gotten the rest of it wrong, too. The direwolf pups had been alive when the boys found them because they’d huddled together. Only the white one had wandered off alone, and it would have died save for the bastard hearing it after they all had ridden away. _They must stay together to survive. We must keep them all together now. Why can’t you see that, Ned?_

They hadn’t actually argued the previous night. They were both too exhausted. Both too devastated. Both too alone. But neither of them wanted to hear what the other had to say, and she was angry at him. She was angry at Ned who didn’t understand that she had done this to Bran. How could she leave him alone when she’d angered the gods and brought this on him somehow. _I prayed for the wrong things._

 _Gods!_ Why had she told Jon Snow what she had prayed. The boy had stood there looking at her with Ned’s eyes, and then he’d had the nerve to speak comfort to her with a voice which sounded more like Ned’s had when she first wed him with every passing moon. Ned had given her no comfort--only reasons why he had no choices. How dare this boy who is nothing to her--who never belonged here--how dare he come into her son’s room wearing Ned’s face and speaking comfort in Ned’s voice? _It_ _should have been you,_ she heard herself saying. _Gods forgive me, I meant it! My son is dying, my husband and my girls are leaving and I fear for them! Why should that boy be whole when Bran is not?_ “I don’t want comfort from Jon Snow. I don’t want him here at all.”

“That is one wish you have been granted, my lady. Jon is gone. The men left for the Wall some time ago.”

She hadn’t even realized she’d spoken the last bit aloud until Ned’s tired, grief-dulled voice spoke from behind her. “His going to Wall was not my doing,” she said flatly. “It was his choice. Although I will not say I am sorry to see him go.”

“I know you are not,” Ned said bitterly.

“Don’t,” she said. “You are here to bid your son farewell, are you not, my lord? Don’t waste whatever precious minutes Robert has granted you with an old argument which we have never settled. We have plenty of new arguments with which to waste our time if you prefer.”

He sighed heavily. “The girls are without, Cat. They wish to bid you and Bran farewell since you will not come out to the yard.”

She turned around to face him for the first time, still holding tightly to Bran’s hand, but tearing her eyes from him to look up into the grey eyes of her husband. “Cannot,” she spit at him. “Bran cannot come down to the yard, and if you cannot understand why I cannot leave him, then I cannot explain it to you.”

Something seemed to break within the depths of those grey eyes then, and Catelyn felt her own heart break in response. _Why?_ she thought. _Why are we doing this alone, each of us?_ They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he looked down. “I’ll bring in the girls.”

He turned and walked back out without another word, and she absently ran her free hand through her hair, or tried to anyway. It was a tangled mess. She must look a sight. She didn’t care in the least, but she felt a pang of guilt that this would be the girls’ last look at her for the gods only knew how long. She couldn’t think about that. She would go mad if she thought about that. She was already going mad with worry over Bran, and if she paused to consider that anything could happen to her girls while they were away from her, she wouldn’t be able to take care of Bran at all. She wasn’t certain she’d even be able to keep breathing.

She gave up on her hair and instead reached down to brush Bran’s back from his cool forehead. She really did need to cut it for it had grown longer than he ever wore it. “Mother?” Sansa’s voice.

It was hard to turn away from the face of her pale, still son, but she forced herself to look toward her daughters. “Hello, sweetlings,” she said. Her voice sounded thick and hoarse. She had cried too much this day.

Sansa looked down then as if trying not to cry herself.

“We’re going now, Mother,” Arya said from behind her sister. “I don’t want to ride in that stuffy wheelhouse with that awful queen. I want to ride a horse. It’s all right if I ride, isn’t it?”

Catelyn felt as if she were underwater. Her thoughts were slow and muddled. Why should it matter whether the girls were on horseback or in a wheelhouse? Either one would take them south. Either one would take them away. “Ask you father, Arya,” she said after a moment. “He shall have charge of the two of you now.” She swallowed hard. “I will not be there to ask.”

“But you don’t think it’s terrible if I ride a horse?” her younger daughter persisted. “That it’s . . .unladylike?”

Catelyn managed to muster the smallest of smiles for her little girl then. She never let go of Bran’s hand, but she did reach for Arya’s hand with the other, and it shocked her how warm and vital her daughter’s flesh felt compared to her son’s. “Arya,” she said seriously, trying very hard to focus on her daughter for this one moment. “I have traveled to a great many places in the North with your father. Have you ever known me to travel by wheelhouse?”

“Do we even have one?” Arya asked.

Catelyn nearly laughed, but the sensation was foreign to her and felt wrong with Bran’s cold hand still in hers. “I am certain there is something of the sort to be had, although nothing as large or elaborate as Queen Cersei’s. It is simply that horses make better transport in the North. Wheels are easily stuck in ruts along the road, and thanks to our snows the ruts are deep here. I always ride. Do you find me unladylike?” _Likely, you do now,_ Catelyn thought, recalling her inability to get her fingers through her hair and the fact that her eyes must be very red and swollen.

“Never,” Arya said fiercely, and Catelyn patted her hand. “Then, you may ride with your lord father’s permission and still consider yourself a lady.”

Sansa snorted, and Arya lunged at her. “I told you I could ride a horse.”

“Mother, make her stop! She’ll get my dress dirty!”

“Both of you stop,” Catelyn sighed, feeling suddenly much too tired to deal with yet another petty squabble between the girls. _Where is Ned?_ she wondered with some irritation. _He knows I must focus on Bran._ “I won’t have you fighting here in your brother’s room.”

Both girls looked down at Bran and looked abashed. “Is he doing any better, Mother?” Sansa asked then.

Catelyn shook her head. “I cannot say. He will not wake. I try everything. I talk to him and sing to him. I rub his hands. I’ve even tried tickling him, but . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked away from the girls and stared back down at Bran once more. “He will not wake.”

“He will, Mother!” Arya insisted. “I know he will. I only wish he’d do it before we leave.”

“I am afraid that is a forlorn hope, sweetling as the king and your father are anxious to be away.” She heard the bitterness in her voice and knew the girls must hear it, too. Sansa confirmed that by her next words.

“Father doesn’t want to go at all,” Sansa said loyally. “We wouldn’t be leaving now if King Robert hadn’t commanded it.”

“Well aren’t you glad he did so you can go south with your awful prince.”

“Stop it, Arya! You know I don’t want to go while Bran is so ill. And it isn’t wrong to want to marry a prince! It isn’t. You’re only jealous because I’ll be a queen one day, and you’ll only be . . .Arya Horseface!”

“Stop it, both of you!” Catelyn raised her voice then. “I can’t stand your bickering. I can’t.” She felt the ever present tears behind her eyes and fought them back. “Sansa, you must not call your sister names. It is unkind, and I know you are not an unkind person. Arya, your sister is betrothed the prince. She is young and will not marry for a long time, but it is good that she wants to know her future husband. She should wish to spend time with him.”

“But Joffrey’s a . . .”

“Prince, Arya,” Catelyn interrupted. “He is the crown prince, and he will one day be your goodbrother.”

“What if Sansa doesn’t like him when she gets to know him? What if he’s horrible?”

 _What if? What if?_ The words rang through Catelyn’s brain. _What if I had encouraged Ned to refuse this in the first place? What if I_ _had not been so selfish in my prayers? What if Bran had only listened to me for once and stayed off the walls?_ She heard other words in her head as well, Ned’s words. _We have no choice, my lady._ Looking at her daughters now, Catelyn realized those words were likely truer of Sansa than of any of them. She was betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon, and barring some unforeseen circumstance, one day she would be his wife, and she had no choice in the matter. _I had no choice. Not in my betrothal to_ _Brandon. Nor in my marriage to Ned._ She took Sansa’s hand then. For all her girlish excitement and overly impressed opinion of Joffrey Baratheon, Catelyn knew her daughter well enough to know she was still apprehensive. How she wished she could be with her to help her along. How she wished she could keep her in Winterfell, keep all of them safe in Winterfell.

“Sansa,” she said. “Joffrey will have his faults, sweetling. Don’t let your dreams blind you to those. But it is good that you find things you like and admire in the man you will call husband. And I know he will find much to admire in you. You will shine in the south, my girl.”

She looked back and forth between her daughters, so different from each other and both so precious to her. It took more willpower than she thought she had, but she let go of Bran’s hand so that she could reach for Arya’s and thus hold both of her girls together. “You will both shine,” she said firmly. “See to it you mind Septa Mordane as well as your lord father. They will steer you right.”

Arya rolled her eyes. “Septa will steer me to do more sewing.”

“Arya,” Catelyn said, in some exasperation. “I know it is not your favorite activity, but do promise me you won’t entirely neglect your needle work. Can you promise me that?”

A strange expression came over the girl’s face then, and those eyes, so like Ned’s, lit up a bit. “Yes, Mother,” she proclaimed in sincere tones. “I promise I will practice very hard at my Needle work.”

Catelyn had the oddest feeling Arya’s promise was not what it seemed. The child looked too pleased with herself. But she hadn’t the time or the energy to pursue it. Quickly she pulled them both to her for a quick embrace. “Take care of each other,” she whispered. “You are sisters. Whatever else you may be.” She then let go of them quickly, afraid that if she held them any longer she would not be able to let them go at all. As soon as her hands were free, one of them found Bran’s again immediately, as if of its own accord.

“It is time, girls.” The cool, quiet, deep voice startled her, and she looked up to see her husband standing just inside the doorway. She wondered how long he had been there.

“Kiss your brother, and come along. They’re waiting for us.”

Arya and Sansa moved to bend over Bran. She heard them speaking, but she didn’t catch the words. She was looking at Ned. His grey eyes met hers without looking away, but other than a deep sadness, she wasn’t certain what she saw there.

Both girls embraced her again as they turned to go, but this time she did not embrace them back. She held tightly to Bran, the sweet broken child now left to her, just she’d prayed he would be. _Gods forgive me._

“Go on down to the yard, girls,” Ned said then. “I will take my leave of your brother and your lady mother, and then I shall be down as well.”

Both girls said, “Yes, Father,” and Catelyn thought they said something to her as well, but she could not look at them now. She had turned back to Bran, finding that she couldn’t bear to watch them physically walk from the room.

“You did very well with them, my lady.” Ned said quietly after a moment.

She turned slowly to look at him. “They are yours now, my lord. I hope you do well with them.”

“Catelyn,” he said, and he stepped forward to brush a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “You are their mother. Nothing can change that.”

She shook her head. “They will grow and change much before I see them again. They will know more of Cersei Lannister than of me.” Her voice broke. “Ned . . .If what Lysa wrote is true . . .I fear . . .”

“I will protect them, my love. You know I would give my life for our daughters, Cat. I will keep them from harm.”

“I don’t want you giving your life for anybody.” She looked back down at Bran as she spoke, but she heard the smile in his voice with his next words.

“I am glad to hear that, my lady. I feared you did not hold me in very high regard at the moment.”

She did look up at him then. “Are you really going?” she asked him flatly. “Are you really leaving us? Leaving your son like this?”

“Damn it, Catelyn, I have no choice!” he said with his jaw clenched tightly. “You know I don’t want to leave. My gods, Cat! Surely you know I do not want this.”

“And yet you’re leaving. And Bran is staying. He is the one with no choice, my lord. Because the gods are cruel.”

“Cat, don’t say . . .”

“Don’t say what? That the gods are cruel? But they are. Whether they be yours or mine, any gods that would punish an innocent boy for the selfish prayers of frightened woman . . .” She shook her head.

“Catelyn,” he said then. This time her name was little more than a whisper, and there was no edge to it. It was more a prayer or a plea. “You did not cause this, my lady. No more than I. And it is not the work of the gods, either. But if your sister speaks truly, much of our trouble is the work of the Lannisters, and that is the truth I must find. We spoke of this. You know these things.”

“I know this thing!” she nearly shouted at him, indicating their beautiful, broken son with a sweep of our arm. "And I know this changes everything. And I don’t know how you cannot see that.” She was shaking again, and she realized the tears flowed freely once more. _Will they never be emptied?_

His eyes were dry as he looked at her, but she could see the pain in them. She knew his grief was as deep as her own. That’s why she didn’t understand how he could do this. She could no more walk away from Bran now than she could stop herself from breathing. How could he do this?

He walked to Bran’s bedside then, opposite her, and he knelt down and touched a hand to Bran’s face. Ned’s hand was so large, and Bran’s little face so thin and pinched now. “Be well, my son,” he whispered. “Be strong. Be safe. May the gods preserve you and bring you back to your mother.” His voice actually broke, and Catelyn covered her mouth to prevent a sob from escaping. Ned did not cry. She’d seen him through all manner of grief, but he did not cry.

He laid his head down then on Bran’s chest, and stayed that way for some time. Finally he raised up, and looked across their son at her. “I must go now, Cat. They will not wish to wait any longer.”

She shrugged. “I care not what they wish.”

He stood then, and walked around to where she sat. He bent and pressed his lips to the top of her head for she would not look up at him. “I shall miss you, my love. Every day. Every night. Be strong, Cat. Be strong for our boys, and I shall endeavor to be strong for our girls.”

She closed her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to fall into his arms. She wanted him to stay beside her here. Perhaps, if he would stay and hold Bran’s hand, she might sleep just a bit. But he straightened up, and when she did not stand with him, he sighed deeply. “Goodbye, my lady,” he said, and he turned away from her.

“Stay,” she said. It was barely a breath of air, but she couldn’t hold it in.

He turned back to her, looking anguished. She did stand then. She let go of Bran’s hand and walked to her husband. “I have never asked it of you,” she said. “I have lived in your castle for nigh on fifteen years and borne four of your babes here. How many times have I watched you ride out of those gates, never knowing if you would return to me? I watched you ride away to Pyke to fight a war while I carried Arya. I’ve watched you go to settle disputes among clansmen as likely to shoot a man as speak to him. And not one time in all those years, in all those departures, have I ever asked you to stay, Ned. Not once.”

“Catelyn . . .” He put his hands on her arms.

“But I am asking you now. No. I am begging you. For the love you bear me. For the love you bear our children, our son, Bran . . .stay.” She looked directly in his eyes allowing him to see the plea in her own eyes. She had never begged him for anything. Catelyn Tully Stark did not beg. He knew that about her.

He looked more distraught than she’d ever seen him. He leaned forward and kissed the tears on her face, and she allowed his touch. But then he pulled back and looked at her. “I have no choice, Cat. Would that I did, but I do not. May the gods keep all of us safe, and bring us back together, my love.”

She felt her heart shatter then, and she shook her head. “They will not keep us safe or bring us together,” she told him. “The gods are cruel.” Then, in the barest whisper, she added, “And so are you.”

She turned from him then and went back to their son. She held his cold little hand between both of hers and bent her head forward to touch his forehead. She was unsure how long she remained like that, but when she did look up, Ned was gone.


	3. Three

THREE

Catelyn leaned into the almost non-existent breeze coming in from the single tiny window of the stuffy little room. _You_ _have li_ _ved too long as a Stark of the North, Catelyn Tully, to find the heat so oppressive._ But King’s Landing was oppressive, as much for the press of people and closely spaced buildings and the stench in the streets as for the actual warmer temperatures. It was particularly oppressive to a woman who had lived as a virtual prisoner since her arrival here. Petyr had cautioned her numerous times about remaining unseen so she kept herself far from even the dubious comfort of the window during the heat of the day, putting her face to it and allowing the small currents of the air to lift her hair barely off her hot skin only after sundown.

She had not thought to spend another night in this stuffy room, and she was uncertain whether she was glad of the events which forced her to remain there or not. While she wished above all things to return home to Winterfell and see with her own eyes that her sweet Bran still lived, leaving Kings Landing was far more difficult with the memory of Ned’s lips upon hers still so vivid from earlier today. He was so close to her, and yet she could not see him or touch him and would be riding away from him in the morning.

He had wanted her gone from here already. _Take Ser Rodrik and ride for Winterfell._ Of course, he’d spoken those words as he’d held her in his arms in spite of Petyr’s presence in the room, so she knew this parting was as difficult for him as it was for her. _If_ _only we had had more time, my love. There is so much more I need to say to you._ He’d even kissed her lips as Petyr looked on, which was very unlike Ned, and she’d clung to him as if her life depended upon it. When Petyr had left them alone for much too brief a time, he had kissed her more deeply after giving her the instructions for his bannermen. He’d held her as tightly as she’d held him then until Petyr had come back into the room, clearing his throat loudly and smirking at Ned. When he’d pulled himself away from her, she’d felt her like her heart was being ripped from her chest.

She and Ser Rodrik had ridden out from the gate of the city an impossibly short time later, the skin of her face still tingling from Ned’s beard and the word war still echoing through her mind in his voice. They’d scarcely gone a league when Ser Rodrik’s horse threw a shoe, and they were forced to return to have another placed. Unfortunately, even though Ser Rodrik dismounted and led the beast along carefully, it still managed to stumble and then came up lame, which caused them to require not a new shoe, but a new mount.

By the time they had limped the poor creature back to the Red Keep and Ser Rodrik had found a suitable new horse, it was far too late to begin the journey, and Catelyn had found herself in the humiliating position of returning to a brothel to ask if she could have the little room for one more night. The proprietor had allowed her back in, but insisted upon sending word to Petyr to be certain he didn’t object. Keeping her hood drawn tightly to cover her hair and a good bit of her face, Catelyn had walked through a small group of unfortunate girls who worked at the establishment to climb the stairs to the top floor. _They’re_ _probably wondering when I have to start earning my keep,_ she’d thought ruefully. This is certainly one type of establishment she’d never imagined herself entering, much less sleeping in for days.

She’d immediately pulled off her cloak and her dress which, of course, was made for the Northern climate and much too thick to be comfortable here, and she now sat in her shift trying to find relief from the heat, her troubled thoughts, and her warring emotions. She was so lost in her own thoughts, that she actually jumped and cried out a little when she heard the knock at the door.

Horrified at the thought of being discovered by anyone while wearing only a shift in a brothel bedchamber, she grabbed quickly for her full length cloak which covered her completely before going to the door. When she opened it, she cried out again, for standing in the dark corridor wearing an ill-fitting cloak with a hood that covered nearly his entire face was her husband.

“Ned,” she gasped, and he put his hands on her arms to move her back enough to allow him entry into the room, quickly closing the door behind him.

 _Why have you come? Has something happened? Is there news of Bran?_ A thousand terrifying thoughts chased one another through her brain, but she found herself unable to ask any of her questions. Instead, she simply flung herself into his arms and clung to him tightly, pressing her face against his chest.

He held her to him in silence for a moment, and she felt his lips brush the top of her head. “Cat,” he rasped hoarsely after a bit. “I thought you would be well away by now.” His arms held her more tightly then as if to confirm she truly was still here. “Why did you not go, my lady?”

She pulled back just enough to look up at him in the dim light of the single candle she had burning. “We did go. But then Ser Rodrik’s horse came up lame and we had to . . .”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence as his lips came down on hers, and he kissed her until she was quite breathless. When he finally broke the kiss, he was breathing heavily as well. “Littlefinger sent me word you remained in King’s Landing.” Even with her mind still spinning from his unexpected appearance and that kiss, she didn’t fail to notice the growl in Ned’s voice when he said the word ‘Littlefinger.’ “He warned me to stay in the Red Keep well away from you and gave me his word that he would see you safely away early on the morrow.”

“But you’re here.”

He looked pained at that. “I could not remain away,” he said softly. “Not when I knew you to be so close. And he did not give a reason for your remaining. I feared you might be unwell.” He swallowed. “I had to see you, even if I am a fool for taking the risk.”

She loved him for it, yet she feared for him. “I would not have you put yourself in danger, my love.”

Ned made a short, bitter sound in his throat. “I fear I put all of us in danger when I left you alone in Winterfell to face an assassin, my lady.” He pulled her arms from around him and held both her hands in his, running his fingers over the terrible red gashes on her maimed fingers. “I should have taken these cuts, Cat. Not you.”

She shook her head. “No, Ned. You cannot blame yourself. What I said to you when you left . . .”

“I should have listened to you!” He nearly shouted the words, letting go of her hands and turning to stomp a couple paces away before turning back. “I failed all of you, Cat,” he said simply.

“No,” she said. Catelyn looked at this man she loved so deeply and sighed. They had not gotten to speak of anything that lay between them in the short time they’d had without Petyr in the room earlier. “Take off that cloak and sit down, Ned.” She motioned toward the bed and turned away to remove and hang up her own cloak.

When she turned back to face him, she found him staring at her shift with a questioning expression, and she blushed. “It is hot in this room, my lord, and my wardrobe is far more suited to the North, I fear. I could hardly answer the door like this, and so I grabbed my cloak.”

He looked decidedly amused then. “You were _hot_ , my lady? You, my wife, Catelyn Tully Stark, found yourself made uncomfortable by heat?”

She smiled at him as she sat down on the edge of the bed, beckoning him to sit beside her. “It would seem that you have made me into more of a wolf than either of us suspected, my love.”

He took her hands again as he sat beside her, and said in all seriousness, “I have never doubted that.” He ran his fingers over the gashes once again, and she heard both anger and pride in his voice when he said, “Only a mother wolf defends her pups so fiercely.

 _He is angry at himself,_ she thought, _and he is not to blame for this._ “Ned,” she said urgently. “You must listen to me. When Bran fell, I nearly lost my mind. I was mad with grief . . .and the things I said to you . . .I am sorry, my love.”

“For what? Speaking the truth? Since I left Winterfell, we’ve had nothing but misfortune. The attack on Bran. The business with Arya and the prince. Sansa’s wolf.” He shook his head. “I should have listened to you. I don’t belong here, Cat. You said nothing that was untrue.”

“But I did,” she said softly. “I called you cruel.”

He’d been looking down, but his head snapped up at that, and he looked her in the eyes. She could see that her cold words from that terrible day hurt him still. “You are not cruel, Ned,” she whispered. “You have been thoughtless at times, and I have thought you wrong. But you have never been cruel.”

“Haven’t I?” he asked her. He sighed heavily and turned to gaze toward the little window across the room from them. “When I asked your father’s permission to marry you in Brandon’s stead, I vowed to bring you nothing but honor. We both knew our marriage was a matter of politics and war, but you came to it so bravely. I swore to myself I would endeavor to be a worthy husband to you. Even if I could never be Brandon.”

 _And you left me with child and immediately went to another woman’s bed to get another,_ she thought bitterly, hating herself for thinking of that now. They had no time for bitterness between them now.

“And I have failed in that endeavor time and again,” he continued, as if he were reading her thoughts. He looked at her then. “I know I have, my lady. And my failures toward you are even more bitter to me now than when we were newly wed.”

She watched his face as he sought for the words to continue. For years now, she had kept silent whenever Ned struggled to speak his thoughts clearly. He kept so much inside him, this Northern husband of hers. And while she despaired of ever knowing all his mind, she had no doubt she knew more of it than anyone else. So, she waited for him to find the words for whatever he needed to share with her now.

“You were meant to be Brandon’s, Cat, I know that well. As was Winterfell and all the rest of it. Yet, it all came to me. You became mine. And for the sake of that direwolf cloak I put on your shoulders, I wanted to be a good husband to you from the start.” His grey eyes seemed to shine in the flickering light and shadows then as he gazed at her. “But soon after we came together at Winterfell, I wanted to be a good husband simply for your sake alone. Because you deserve it. Because your happiness matters to me more than mine.” He swallowed again. “Leaving Winterfell knowing I’d hurt you was as difficult as leaving Bran in his sickbed. Forgive me, Cat.”

“Ned,” she said, placing her hands on the sides of his face. “You didn’t hurt me. Bran’s fall hurt me. The Lannisters have hurt all of us. I told you I was mad with grief , and I spoke like a madwoman. I will forgive you any hurt you think you’ve done me if you will forgive the words I spoke to you.”

“I would forgive you anything, my lady.”

There was such raw honesty in his words that Catelyn felt tears rush to her eyes. He had wronged her, all those years ago, but he had not yet loved her then. And she knew he loved her now. She’d found love enough for any woman with her solemn, brooding Northman in his frozen lands. While he rarely used the word, he caused her to know it all the same, for she had learned that Eddard Stark was not frozen like his lands. No, he was only still and quiet like the hot springs of Winterfell. And like those springs, he was warmth and life to her.

“I am glad you did not listen to Petyr,” she said, throwing her arms around him once more. “For I would have you here with me now, regardless of his concerns.”

Ned’s eyes darkened. “The concerns of Petyr Baelish are of little importance to me,” he said sourly. “Yet, he is overly concerned with you. And he likes me little enough--whether it is because I am Brandon’s brother or your husband, I am not certain. Likely both.”

She laughed at him. “Well, you like him little enough as well. But he as been a friend to me here, Ned.”

“Has he?” Ned shook his head. “I do not trust him, Catelyn. I cannot help but wonder if we would be better off had you not stayed Brandon’s hand all those years ago.”

“Ned!” she cried, removing her arms from his neck and looking at him reproachfully. “That is a terrible thing to say. Petyr was only a boy! A foolish boy whom I never looked upon as anything but a brother. I thought of him no differently than Edmure, for the gods’ sake!” She shook her head sadly. “It is true that he had somewhat different feelings for me, but I didn’t even realize it until he challenged Brandon to that ridiculous duel. And then Brandon was trapped. He couldn’t refuse to fight him, and Petyr couldn’t possibly win. So, I prayed for the outcome to be as it was--Petyr defeated, but still alive. And I haven’t even heard from Petyr in all these long years save for a single letter he sent me after Brandon’s death.”

“Letter? You never told me he sent you a letter. What did he say?”

“I don’t know. I burned it.”

“Burned it?”

Catelyn sighed. “I thought it rather disloyal to read a letter from a boy who’d professed to love me and fought my betrothed for my hand even as I was mourning Brandon.” She shook her head sadly. “And I knew then that I was to marry you. Petyr’s words could mean little to me.”

“You would have considered his words had I not asked for your hand?”

“No! Of course not. I told you I wouldn’t have betrayed Brandon’s memory like that in any case.”

“No,” Ned said broodingly. “You would never betray Brandon, my lady. I know that.”

 _Damn!_ “Eddard Stark, look at me.” She waited until she was certain she had his full attention before continuing. “Winterfell has been cold to me since your departure. Even after the attack upon Bran and myself, when I was taken back to my own warm chambers, I found them cold upon awaking there alone. It was not your brother’s absence there that left me so empty of warmth, and it certainly was not any thought of Petyr Baelish! I missed you, Ned. I missed you more terribly than I would miss a part of myself. And I shall begin missing you just as terribly once again the minute you walk from this room. I know you cannot stay, so I ask you, my love--Do you truly wish to spend what little time we have discussing Brandon or Petyr? For I do not. I would have you in my arms and think only of you.”

He put one hand on her waist then and ran the other through her hair. “I have missed you, Cat. Sometimes I try not to think of you because to think of you and not have you beside me is so painful. I would do anything to have us all together, my love, anything save put us in more danger. And now, I fear that is precisely what I would do if I took the girls and left with you now.”

She nodded. “I know. Too much has happened, and we have come too far down this path. It’s as you said earlier. You must play your part here and try to discover some evidence to help us convince Robert of the truth.” She shivered as the hand stroking her hair came down to brush lightly over her breast, and she felt her nipples stand up against the thin material of her shift. “But must you go quite yet?” she whispered.

“No,” he said, gazing at her with eyes like smoke. Gently, he urged her to stand so that he could raise the shift over her head. He stood with her, and once she was freed of the shift, he pressed his lips to her neck and her breasts while she worked frantically at the fastenings of a jacket she knew did not belong to him.

Moaning in frustration at her inability to get him unclothed quickly enough with her wounded fingers, she pushed his own hands off her and set them to the task of undressing himself while she removed her smallclothes and sat down on the bed to watch him. She loved the sight of his naked body. He remained fit and strong at thirty-five even if he were not quite as thin as he had been in his youth. The many scars he bore both fascinated and terrified her. His skin had been almost entirely unmarked when he’d wed her, as he’d taken very little hurt in the battles of the Rebellion fought before their marriage. Now, scars of all sizes and shapes crossed each other over his trunk and arms--a testament to how fiercely her husband fought when necessary, but also a reminder of how easily she could lose him to some violent end.

She pushed such fearful thoughts away, and opened her arms to him as he lay atop her. He was already completely hard, and she drew in her breath as his cock pressed against her thigh. He didn’t move to enter her, though, instead putting his hand between her thighs and teasing the flesh there that already burned with desire for him. He moved over her, kissing her face, her neck, her body. He knew all the ways she liked to be touched, and he seemed determine to touch her in every single one of them.

We have no time, she thought desperately as his hands and mouth and body against hers conspired to drive away all rational thought. “Don’t wait, Ned,” she whispered as the rasp of his beard rubbed against her face. “Please.”

He understood her well enough. He stopped moving for a moment to look down at her face, and she saw in his eyes all the wonderful and terrible things she was feeling herself--love and desire, fear and grief, and a desperate need to hold onto each other even as everything forced them apart. He kissed her then--a sweet tender kiss quite different from the feverish kisses he’d been painting her body with since he lay down with her. Then he moved his hips slightly and pushed into her with a groan. “Cat,” he said, still looking directly into her eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered, and she moved her own hands down onto his hips and encouraged him to move once more.

He began thrusting, and she raised her hips to meet every stroke. They never once stopped looking at each other, and as she lost herself, she was watching his face as he lost himself with her, and she felt his seed, warm and wet, inside her.

He collapsed onto her then, and neither of them spoke as they lay tangled together listening to each other’s breathing and heartbeats.

Finally, he rolled off her, and she rolled to stay against him.

After a moment, he chuckled softly. “You truly are too warm here, Lady Stark. You haven’t reached for the covers.”

She laughed with him because he was right. They both lay naked and uncovered in the night air, and she had no desire for any warmth but his. “You will kiss the girls for me?” she asked quietly after a moment.

“I cannot tell them I’ve seen you, Cat.”

“I know. But you can kiss them and tell them I’m thinking of them.” She bit her lip hard and tried not to cry.

“I can do that, my love. And I will.” After a moment, he said, “Robb knows you here. Tell him I am proud of him, and that I trust him to do well while I am gone.”

Ned’s voice sounded too thick, and Catelyn nodded, barely able to say “I will” without crying.

“Kiss Rickon and tell him I’ll send him something fine from King’s Landing. And if . . .when . . .Bran wakes, tell him . . .tell him I wish by all the gods I were there.” Ned stopped speaking then, and Catelyn knew she had never heard his voice so ragged before.

She moved up in the bed to kiss his cheek. “I will, my love. I will kiss all our boys and tell them how much you miss them. And that you will do all you can to be with us again soon.”

“Aye,” he said. “That I will.”

They didn’t speak for a few moments after that, and Catelyn closed her eyes and reveled in the sensation of simply being in her husband’s arms. She had slept so little for so long other than the long sleep after the assassin’s attack that her body was near exhaustion. Lying there with Ned, she felt safer than she had since before Robert Baratheon had ever come to Winterfell, in spite of the danger she knew them to be in.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she murmured. “I want to keep you with me.”

“I must go before it is light,” he said, but he held her more tightly, and she knew he wanted to leave as little as she wanted him to go.

She nodded against him. “I would have you leave before it becomes too dangerous,” she said. “But . . .it will be dark awhile yet. For just awhile, Ned, will you stay?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Yes, my love,” he whispered. “You go to sleep now, for I would like to hold you as you sleep.”

“But you’ll be gone when I wake,” she protested, her heart breaking at the thought of it.

“Aye,” he said quietly. Likely, he thought it would be too painful to say goodbye once more, not knowing when they might see each other again. “But I promise I will stay a bit, Cat. Sleep, my love, and I will stay and hold you as long as I can.”

“Mmmm,” she said sleepily. “I love you.”

As she drifted off to sleep, unable to fight her exhaustion any longer, she thought she heard him whisper, “If only I could stay with you forever.”

When she woke, he was gone, leaving her only his scent on her skin and the sweet ache between her thighs to assure her it had not been a dream.


	4. Four

FOUR

Catelyn sat alone by the trestle table as Utherydes Wayn and the silent sisters left the room. She stared at the bones that lay on the table and tried again to see some trace of the man she had loved. _He is not here. These bones are not my husband._ She wondered then where Ned was. Had his old gods taken him to whatever refuge awaited the very best men of the North? And if they had, would she be able to find him there when her time came?

She felt a terrible panic seize her for she belonged to the Seven, and she didn’t know if they would let her go. Or if Ned’s gods would allow her to follow him. She had certainly followed him into the godswood at Winterfell often enough, but had never managed to feel anything other than an outsider there, however many Stark babes she had borne or years she had spent in the North. _Ned would wait for me if he is able. I know he would._

She realized with some shock that her cheeks were wet. Fear of cruel gods keeping them separate in the next life after evil men separated them in this one had undone her as the cold, lifeless bones could not. “Ned, my love. I need you so much,” she said aloud, not truly knowing if she spoke to the bones or to the air or only to herself. She closed her eyes and once again wished devoutly that, like the silent sisters were said to do, she could truly speak to the dead.

She forced herself to look at the bones once more and found that the most powerful emotion provoked within her then was anger at the sight of that sword which was not Ice. The ancestral sword of House Stark belonged to Robb now. The Lannisters had no right to keep it. She had an irrational urge to rip this offending weapon from the skeletal hands and hurl it across the room onto the floor, but that would likely have Brienne running in to see to her. Catelyn had no doubt the odd, awkward girl was standing guard at the door. She took the oath she had given Catelyn seriously.

“And what would you think of that, Ned?” she asked the bones. “I have my own vassal now.” She laughed as she imagined her husband’s expression at beholding Brienne of Tarth standing beside her with her hand on the hilt of her sword. Then she beheld the expressionless skull and the laughter fled.

Jaime Lannister would likely jape there was little difference between a skull and Eddard Stark in terms of expressiveness. The Kingslayer liked to refer to her lord as frozen faced. Undoubtedly there were many men who would agree. Catelyn had once thought his face rather stern and cold herself. Then she had learned that was not Ned’s face at all, but only his lord’s face--the mask her intensely private husband wore to hide his thoughts from the world. _But not from me. He hasn’t hidden himself from me in a very long time. Would that I could see his face now._

She reached out tentatively and traced the direwolf badge on his surcoat. Then she closed her eyes and laid her hand flat on the badge, but there was no warm flesh beneath the material, and she could not feel the steady heartbeat that had lulled her to sleep so many nights.

“I don’t know what to do, Ned,” she whispered. “Renly Baratheon is dead, and Stannis Baratheon is . . .frightening. He deals with a power I do not understand. Robb is in the west where I cannot speak to him, and I am not certain that Edmure’s plan for battle against Lord Tywin is wise. But he thinks me only a frightened woman. Perhaps I am. Our little boys are without mother or father in Wintefell. Sansa is trapped by the wretched Lannisters in King’s Landing, and no one seems to know where Arya is at all. What do I do, Ned? I’m so tired . . . I’m so tired.” The last words came out in a strangled sob as Catelyn let go the tears she had refused to cry for so long.

She lay her head and arms down on the table beside the cold and brittle remains of her lord and love and sobbed as she had not done since she had first heard that Ned had been killed. How long she sobbed, she did not know, but eventually exhaustion took her, and she closed her eyes in slumber.

She knew she dreamed because nothing in her waking life was so sweet, but she gave herself to the dream willingly in hopes that she never had to wake from it. “Come and rest, my love,” Ned told her, smiling at her from her big, soft bed in Winterfell. “The children are all abed, Cat. It is time you should be as well.”

She climbed into the bed beside him and he pulled her into his arms, holding her against him and kissing her gently.

“Never let me go,” she whispered.

“I do not want to, my lady.”

“I cannot keep going without you, Ned. I am not strong enough.”

“You are strong, my love. You must be.”

“I am tired of being strong.”

“I know,” he said soothingly, combing his fingers gently through her hair. “Yet you will stay strong, Cat, because you must.”

“Just don’t let me go. Promise me you’ll stay with me.”

He smiled at her, but said nothing.

“Promise me, Ned. Stay.”

“Lady Catelyn wishes to be left alone!” Lady Brienne’s voice, loud and insistent, penetrated the fog of Catelyn’s dream.

“My sister will wish to see me.”

 _Edmure. Why are Edmure and Lady Brienne arguing in my bedchamber?_ She started to ask Ned if he knew why they we were here and what they were angry about, but she couldn’t see him.

“Ned?” she called. “Ned, where are you? Don‘t go!” She felt panic rising in her throat, and then she blinked her eyes, sitting up suddenly as she saw the bones lying beside her face.

“Stay,” she whispered to the bones, allowing only a single tear to escape her eye as she steeled herself to go and see what occurred between Edmure and Brienne. “Stay,” she said softly to the air as she stood and turned away from those bones toward the door.

But of course, he couldn’t stay. He was never really there.


	5. Five

FIVE

Red. Everything was red, and everything hurt. _Robb! Robb! No!_ Red where the arrows had pierced him. Red where Roose Bolton’s blade came out of his body as he fell. _Ned, make it stop! Please! Please!_ Red on her hands and her face and her arms and then on her throat.

Everything was red. Everything hurt. Then nothing hurt. Everything had become nothing.

She thought perhaps she was drifting. Or maybe she was falling. She wasn’t certain. She could remember the sound of that terrible laugh, but she couldn’t hear it anymore. She tried very hard not to remember anything else. _Robb!_ She closed her eyes tightly (or were they already closed?) and allowed herself to drift--or fall. She couldn’t be certain.

She couldn’t say how long she continued in this manner, but eventually she became aware of soft ground beneath her. _Why am_ _I lying down?_ She pushed herself up into a seated position, and realized her hands were in snow. But they weren’t cold. She wasn’t cold. _The knife was cold. No! Don’t think of that!_

She worried for a moment that she couldn’t see, but realized her eyes were closed. She opened them, blinking against the bright whiteness everywhere. _Snow. But I have no cloak and I am not cold._

The snow reminded her of Winterfell. Of home. There were trees, too. Sentinel pines. But, she did not know this place. It was familiar . . .but not familiar. Slowly, she got to her feet. It was quiet here. No birds sang. _No musicians play. No metal clangs. No one screams. No! Don’t think of that!_

“I have been waiting for you, my lady.”

She whirled around at the sound of his voice. She hadn’t heard that voice in so long. It couldn’t be . . .And yet, there he was, standing behind her, just a short distance away.

“Ned!” she gasped, and then she didn’t care what could or could not be. She didn’t care what this place was or how she was even here. She simply threw herself at him, and felt the solid strength of him as he caught her in his arms.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him. It was just as she remembered. Then she looked up into his face and marveled at it. This was her own dear Ned. “I feared I would never see you again,” she told him.

“I would not accept that,” he said simply. “I have missed you, Cat.”

She made a small sound somewhere between a cry and gasp at that. “Oh gods, Ned. I have missed you so much! I . . .I needed . . .” The memories whispered to her whether she wanted them or not. “Oh, my love, our babes! Our sweet, sweet babes!” She clung to him and started crying in earnest then as the memories she had pushed from her mind came flooding back.

“It is all right now, Cat,” he soothed her. “You are here now.”

“No!” she said, looking up at him. “Our children, Ned! They’ve killed our children! Robb . . .” She stopped. She couldn’t speak of Robb, although she could still see the red where Bolton’s blade had pierced him.

“Robb is beyond their reach now,” he said softly. “Look at me, Cat.”

She did. She looked at him closely, and her eyes widened with wonder. He didn’t look as he had the last time she had seen him. He looked younger, his face unlined, as he had been when she’d stood beside him in the sept at Riverrun. Yet, even as she gazed at him, she realized she could see the grey in his beard and, in fact, he looked precisely as he had the last time she’d seen him in King’s Landing. Only . . . not. She shook her head slowly as she tried to make sense of it. He seemed to have no age at all, or an age that altered itself so frequently that she couldn’t tell it. Yet, he was not a specter. He was warm and solid, and she could feel his heartbeat against hers.

“What is this place, my lord?” she asked slowly.

“A place where I could wait.” He put his hands on her face then, tracing the curve of her cheek and chin with his fingers, and she wondered if her appearance was somehow as mutable and yet still inexplicably unchanging as his was. “A place where you could find me,” he said.

“But . . .where is this place? Where are we, my love?”

He smiled at her, and her heart raced. _How did I ever continue to breathe, thinking that smile lost to me forever?_ “We are together, Cat. That is the first thing you must know and trust. We are together now.”

She began to understand what must have happened, although she couldn’t truly comprehend any of it, and she didn’t want to think too closely on the pain of a few moments (a few days? A few lifetimes?) ago. “Together,” she breathed. “And you will stay?”

He smiled once more, and pressed his lips to hers. She remembered this sensation well enough, and she melted into him for a long kiss. “You will stay with me?” she asked again when they finally broke apart.

“Forever,” he said simply, and she kissed him once more, filled with a joy she had no longer thought herself capable of feeling. _I_ _had become a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings._ She pressed herself against him and felt her heart beating against his. _I had thought only an empty space remained where my heart is. But my heart was always right here. With Ned._

Once more, he broke the kiss. “There is so much to say, my love. But we needn’t hurry. We have time now.”

 _Time._ She wondered if that were truly possible, but accepted that it must be. She was with him once more, and he had said he would stay. They had time.

She watched him looking at her, warmed by the joy she saw in those grey eyes. Joy she knew mirrored what he must see in her own blue eyes. She smiled and started to say something when the expression on his face changed.

“Cat?” His voice sounded alarmed, and his expression was suddenly full of confusion and concern.

“Ned, what’s wrong? What is it, my love?” Her voice sounded wrong suddenly. The words were hard to form. “Ned!” she cried out.

She could see him, but she couldn’t feel his arms. She couldn’t feel the snow-covered ground beneath her feet.

“Catelyn!” she heard his anguished shout and realized that it sounded far away. _You said you would stay, Ned! You said forever!_

She struggled to see him for his face looked unclear now, and he seemed to be moving further and further away from her.

“Stay!” she cried desperately, but he was already gone.

She was drifting. Or falling. She knew nothing but pain and grief once more. Then she realized she felt the pressure of lips against her own. _Ned?_

She fought to open her eyes. They did not seem to work. She was lying on the ground again, but it felt like mud rather than snow, and it was cold. The lips pressed to hers were insistent in a way that had nothing to do with passion, and she felt oddly that they had been there for a long time. _Was it ever Ned I kissed at all?_

She was so cold. The lips against hers were cold. The mud was cold. _I must open my eyes._ Yet, she was terrified to open her eyes. _Robb!_ That terrible memory came flooding back, and she opened her eyes thinking to look upon the evil men who murdered her son.

What she saw was a face--a terrible face with a caved in skull and a missing eye. A dead face. She screamed.

Or she tried to scream. What sound she made was only a strangled hiss.

“Lord of Light preserve us!” a man shouted. “She rises!”

She did rise then, sitting up in the mud. She realized she was naked, and her skin had the pallor of death. Someone covered her with a cloak. There were several men here staring at her. One looked familiar, and she saw a hint of grief in his eyes, but the others were complete strangers to her. They looked at her with fear in their eyes.

 _Good,_ she thought bitterly. _Men should fear me._ She realized she could not feel her own heartbeat. She remembered little except for Roose Bolton’s blade taking her son’s life to the sound of Walder Frey’s laughter. She hated them. They would learn to fear her as well.

 _Ned. Ned was with me._ No. He had not stayed. Her husband and children were murdered and gone. And she could not feel her heartbeat. _There is an empty place within me where my heart once was. And that place is as cold as a stone._


	6. AND ONE MORE

AND ONE MORE

Thoros would find her. She merely had to wait. The sound of the hated laughter still rang in her ears and she knew that Walder Frey still lived. The hated betrayer, violator of guest right, and kingslayer still lived. _My son is dead._ That was the fact her mind returned to over and over. When it was nearly impossible to recall anything at all, she remembered that. _My son is dead._

Men were still fighting. She knew the sounds of battle well enough. While she had forgotten the places of so many battles and the names and faces of the men who’d died in them, she had not forgotten that sound. And as long as it continued now, Freys were dying. _Frey._ She remembered that name well enough. And they all needed to die.

She felt nothing as she lay on the ground just inside the gate of the Twins. No pain. She realized that she should have pain. The blow to the head had been vicious, and the blade had gone directly into her heart. I have no heart. The man who cared for her had not wanted her to come. _Harwin. His name is Harwin. He was at Winterfell. I must remember these things._ She didn’t, though. Not really. Harwin’s name escaped her more often than not, and the place called Winterfell was a less than half-remembered dream, as were the children she had lost from there.

All save Robb. Robb’s name was clear in her mind in a way that few things were. The moment Bolton’s blade had pierced him (she always recalled that hated name, too.) The way old Walder had laughed. The words Roose Bolton had spoken as his blade had sunk into the flesh of her son. _Jaime Lannister sends his regards._

She always recalled that name as well for she wanted Lannister dead, too. The big, ugly girl had sworn to bring him to her. She’d known the girl’s name once, but it was gone now. Sometimes, she almost recalled it, and it gave her an odd sensation, like the almost remembered names of the children she knew she’d had once. But those moments were fleeting. The girl was nothing but a sword. And if she did not use that sword to bring the hated Lannister, the sword or the rope would find her.

The sounds of the battle were fading, but she thought it must be her own ears that failed rather than the strength of her men. Surely, she was dying. _How can I die when I do not live? I have no heart._ Dying didn’t trouble her. She had died once already. They had told her that. The dead man had brought her back, and Thoros could do the same. The man . . .the man . . .from . . .Winterfell, yes, Winterfell. His name was gone again. He had told her these things. He hadn’t wanted her here, but she had wanted to watch Walder Frey die. She wanted him to see her as he died, to know her. _I don’t know myself._ The man had extracted a promise from Thoros that he would bring her back if she were killed here, and he had given it reluctantly.

She barely heard anything now. And she hadn’t been able to see for some time. She clutched her son’s crown tightly in her fingers and willed Thoros to come to her. She would show Robb’s crown to Walder Frey before he died. And she would laugh. Some of the men had tried to get her to wear it, but she refused. Her son had been a king, but she was no queen. Once she had been a mother. But her children had been murdered. She had failed to keep them safe. She was not a mother anymore.

“See to the Lady!”

She heard the shout, although it sounded faraway and scarcely louder than a whisper to her failing ears. Thoros would come now, for she knew the shouter spoke of her. They all called her the Lady. Some called her Lady Stoneheart, but that was wrong. _I have no heart at all._ There were other names as well, but she couldn’t recall them. She’d had another name once. The name only one of her men ever called her. The name Walder Frey would speak in terror when she held up Robb’s crown and laughed at him.

_Catelyn_

The name meant little to her. She thought the Lady Catelyn had loved and been loved, but she couldn’t really remember, and she did not know love and could not feel it. Whoever she was now, she was not Catelyn.

_Tully_

That name meant even less. An image of a leaping trout on a blue field. Family, Duty, Honor. Children with hair like flame laughing and playing near a river. Meaningless words. A fleeting image now and then. Nothing more.

_Stark_

Ah, that name she knew, and for that name she would kill Walder Frey and Jaime Lannister and Roose Bolton and anyone who had ever caused harm to House Stark. For there were no Starks left. Robb had been the last, and he was murdered right here. The other children--the ones she couldn’t recall with clarity--sold, enslaved, or murdered. The man . . . her lord . . . he didn’t stay. He was murdered, too. Only she was left, and she was no Stark. No wife. No mother. _I have no heart._ But she hated those that had taken it all from her, and she would see every one of them as dead as the Starks.

She was drifting. Or falling. For a long time or an instant. She couldn’t be certain. Her mind emptied itself and then filled itself with images out of sequence, like a story told out of order. She couldn’t be certain of anything for a great while (or perhaps not long at all.)

She was lying on her back on something soft. She ran a hand over it, and felt the soft, powdery substance come up in her hand. _Snow._ The word came to her mind from somewhere. But snow should be cold, and she didn’t feel cold at all. That disturbed her. She had felt cold for as long as she remembered. Cold was almost the only thing she could feel. That and hatred. If she lost those things, she would have nothing.

Gradually, she realized her eyes were closed. Had that been the only reason her vision had seemed to go black as she lay on her back at the Twins? She did not think she was at the Twins now. She opened her eyes and had to shut them again immediately against the brightness. The sky above her was a bright, pale blue. She opened her eyes again, more slowly, blinking against the light. As she became used to it, she recognized that much of the brightness was due to the light being reflected off the white snow she was lying upon. She sat up, surprised to realize she could, and saw that the snow spread out in all directions, broken up only by large stands of tall trees.

_I have been here before._

Vaguely, she wondered if this were the place called Winterfell, but that didn’t seem right. She realized her hood had fallen down and reached quickly to pull it back up. Her appearance tended to terrify people, and while she certainly used that to good effect when necessary, some poorly recalled vanity from another life caused her to remain as covered as possible at most times. She didn’t even like to look at the ruined flesh of her hands, herself.

“Catelyn.”

The soft voice startled her, and she jumped to her feet before turning to seek its source. It didn’t sound like Thoros or . . .Harwin, that was his name. It didn’t sound like any of her men, and yet she knew it.

She turned slowly to look at the man who spoke. His hair was dark, but she thought he just might have some grey in his closely cropped beard. For some reason, it was hard to tell his age. He was a good bit taller than she was, but not so tall as several of the men in the brotherhood. His shoulders were broad, and he had an air of strength about him. His expression was somehow grave and hopeful at the same time, although he did not smile or move his mouth at all since speaking the word _My name?_ , and she wondered how she could read his nearly expressionless expression, but she did not doubt she was right.

His eyes held her attention, though. They were dark grey, and they looked at her as if they could see into her very heart. _I have no heart._

“You have returned, my lady. I have been waiting.”

She stared at him, and he took a step toward her, cautiously, as if afraid of startling her like a deer. She was frightened, oddly enough, and she could not recall being frightened for a very long time. He stared at her face as if he had been longing to see it, and she pulled her hood down more tightly. Somehow, she didn’t want this man to see the torn flesh of her face.

 _I know him._ She started to put her hand to her throat, seeking to close the gash enough to ask him his name, but she didn’t want to rasp and choke and hiss at this man. _I know him._

He took another step toward her, and she turned away from him.

“Don’t go, Cat. Please don’t go this time.”

He sounded so sad. _How do I even know that?_ People’s emotions were a mystery to her. She didn’t remember enough of her own or see or hear enough in the faces and words of others to recognize much other than fear.

“Look at me, Cat.”

 _Cat. He calls me Cat._ She did turn around then and looked at him. _Ned._ The name came to her like a breeze lifting her hair or the sun emerging from behind a cloud. _Your name is Ned._

He must have seen the recognition in her face because he smiled then. “You remember me.”

 _Do I remember him?_ She was certain Lady Stoneheart did not know this strong and quiet man with grey eyes. _Did Lady Catelyn_ _know him?_

“You might not know it yet, my love, but you remember me.”

 _My love._ Suddenly she recalled being in a large soft bed with this man. His arms were wrapped around her as he said _You are so beautiful, my love._

She felt a tear escape from her eye as she did take hold of her neck and say, “You are dead.”

He smiled again. “I am here. And so are you, my lady.”

 _My lady. My love. Cat._ The images came fast and furious to her mind now. She had shared a life with this man. She had loved him. Her heart sped up at the thought. _I have no heart._

He’d continued moving slowly toward her, and he was right in front of her now. “You are so beautiful, Cat,” he said, and it stunned her for he sounded exactly like he had in memory. This was her husband, her lord and her love. How could she have forgotten him?

To her horror, she realized he had reached out a hand toward her hood. _Ned loves my hair._ “No!” she cried out. She could not bear to have him see what she had become. She couldn’t bear to have him keep looking at her now. She turned away again.

“Don’t be frightened, my love. I am here.”

She felt his hands on her shoulders, and realized she was trembling. Her heart was racing. _No. That cannot be. I have no heart._

“Please do not look at me.”

“I have waited long to look upon you, my lady. Just to hear your voice once more is more pleasure for me than you could know.”

She started to laugh bitterly at that, but then she realized the words she had spoken had sounded clear and strong. Her hand was still at her neck, but now she let go of the skin there and ran her fingers up and down over her flesh. She could not find the gash.

“Catelyn,” he said softly behind her. “Please let me look at you.”

Slowly, she turned around once more and looked up into his eyes, amazed at what she saw there. _He loves me._ He smiled down at her, longing in his eyes.

“Please stay, Cat. Do not leave again.”

Memory assailed her once more. She had been here before. How had she forgotten so much? “I . . .I thought you left me. I asked you to stay, and you said you would, but then you were gone.”

He shook his head. “I went nowhere, my love. You were taken from me. I didn’t understand at first.”

She didn’t understand now.

“But you have a choice, my lady. No one can call you back without your consent. You can choose to stay here even if someone tries to hold you there.” He spoke urgently, and she wondered if he knew about Thoros.

“Walder Frey still lives,” she said bitterly. Then she looked down at her hands and realized she no longer held Robb’s crown. “Robb!” she gasped. “I’ve lost his . . .”

“Robb has been waiting, too.”

Her head snapped up at that. “Robb is here? My son is here?”

He smiled. “Not precisely here, my lady. This is my place to wait for you. But I have seen our son, and you may see him, too. It would make him most glad.”

“When?” she asked desperately.

He laughed then. “Any time you wish. We have all the time we want. If you so choose.”

She bit her lip in thought. and he seemed to find that amusing as he continued watching her. “What of the others? Can I see them as well? Rickon, Bran, Arya, and Sansa?” Their names now came to her easily as well as their faces and a thousand little bits of knowledge about what made each of them their own precious self. _How could I have forgotten?_

“They are not here,” he said simply.

“Not here? Do they wait somewhere else? Can we not reach them?” She was frantic. She couldn’t have gone through all that she had only to be given Ned and Robb, but not any of the others. She had spent far too long having to tear herself away from one or more of her children in order to provide for another. She wished to have them all with her together.

“They do not wait at all, Cat. We must wait for them now.”

His words took a moment to sink in. “You mean they are not . . . are not . . .” It was hard to say the word. “Dead?” she whispered.

“They are not.”

A moment of wild elation was followed by the most crushing grief and guilt as she realized what that meant. “But then they are alone!” she cried. “Ned, I have left them! Who will find them and care for them and keep them safe?”

“You have done all you can, Catelyn. We must trust in our children now, that they can do what they must.”

“But they are babes, still!” She hung her head. “I could go back to them,” she whispered. “Thoros promised Harwin. I could go back.” Her expression grew harder. “And too many Freys still live. And Roose Bolton. And Jaime Lannister and his abominable sister.” She looked up at her husband’s face. “Why should they live when you and our firstborn son do not? Why should the Lannister bastards have a mother when our children do not?”

He looked at her sadly, and that made her even angrier. “I cannot simply do nothing, Ned! I am their mother!” _I had forgotten_ _what it is to be a mother. I had no heart._ But she could feel her heart beating against her ribs now. “I have no wish to leave you ever, my lord, but how can I stay if I could go to them?” She had shaken her head emphatically as she’d said ‘no wish to leave you,’ and her hood fell from her head.

She gasped and put her hands up to cover her hair. The gash on her throat had gone, and her hands seemed well enough except for the faint outlines of the old scars from the dagger, but she feared there was no repairing what had been covered by the hood, so she tried to hide it as best she could.

Ned was having none of it, though. “I have always loved your hair, my lady,” he said firmly, and he reached out and took a large section of it into his hand and pulled it forward through his fingers.

“No,” she whispered, but as she reached to grab his hand away, she saw the hair he held. It was neither white nor brittle. It was red---but not the color of blood--the color of a sunset sky in summer or a hearthfire in winter. Stunned, she simply stared at it, holding his hand as he held it up.

He seemed to understand. “I told you that you were beautiful, my lady.”

She looked up at him. “I . . .I didn’t believe you.”

“Do you believe me now?”

She let go of him and ran both hands over her face where she felt no deep gouges or hanging flesh. She looked up at him, and he smiled at her. “Here, my love, you look to me as I know you. And you see yourself as I see you. It is the same for me.”

“And if I go back . . .”

He didn’t say anything. He only looked at her sadly.

It wasn’t vanity--not entirely, anyway, although she had always prided herself on being honest and knew that she loved the fact that she truly was beautiful once more for Ned. But mostly she feared that she would lose everything else she had regained as well. How had she forgotten everything? _I had no heart._ She swallowed hard and reached for his hand. Other than putting his hands on her shoulders, and then reaching for her hair, he had been painfully careful about not touching her without her permission, but his eyes closed briefly and he sighed as she placed his hand on her chest.

“Do you feel that?” she asked him. “Do you feel my heart?”

“Aye,” he said hoarsely. He swallowed. “Might I hold you, my lady?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she put her arms around his neck, allowing him to encircle her in his arms. He sighed contentedly against her hair then. “I would have you stay, Cat. But you must choose.”

He was trembling as much as she was, she realized. She tilted her head up to look at his face. “When I . . .went back before, I wasn’t myself. I don’t know what sort of life it is, but it doesn’t feel like this. It doesn’t feel like anything. I had no heart.”

“You have the greatest heart I have ever known, my love.”

“But only when I’m here with you, I fear. Ned, if I go back, will I forget it all again? How do I help our children if I can’t remember them?”

“I cannot answer that for you, Catelyn. But I suspect you already know what it is you would return to.”

She nodded. She would become again the creature they called Lady Stoneheart. She would return to the Twins and the battle there. “Walder Frey, Roose Bolton, and Jaime Lannister all live, my lord,” she reminded him angrily. "I swore I would not rest until all who harmed House Stark were dead.”

The grey eyes clouded a bit as he regarded her. “I fear I have indeed made you into a Stark, my lady, for the North is a cold land for hard people, and we do not lay down our swords easily when wronged. No. We hold onto our vengeance, I fear, and call it justice.”

“It is justice!” she cried. “By what right should those villains live and prosper while our children still suffer?”

“By no right at all, my love,” he said softly. “And by what right should you and I continue to suffer needlessly when the gods themselves have seen fit to give us our rest?”

She bit her lip again. “I don’t want to leave you, Ned. Truly I don’t. But what if I don’t have a choice?”

“You do have a choice, if you will only see it,” he said, and she saw in his eyes that he knew well enough he echoed words she had spoken to him long ago.

“I do not blame you for any of this, my love,” she said, reaching up to touch his troubled face.

“And I will not blame you if you choose to return should that world call you back.” He put his own hands on her face then and held it gently. “But, Cat. I am asking you to stay. Please.”

Her mind churned with all that had happened. As she tried to see her way clearly, she saw a look of alarm flash across Ned’s face. “Cat!” he said, and she felt his hands leave her face to clutch tightly around her body. At the same time, she felt an odd pulling and had the sensation that Ned was moving away from her even as she could feel his arms around her. She remembered this now.

“Please, Cat. Stay.” She looked at the face she loved so much and thought that nothing could possibly matter as much in that moment as erasing the pain she saw on it. She didn’t know how she was supposed to choose, though.

She shouted, “No!” as loudly as she could. She was not crying out to Ned this time, but shouting her refusal to Thoros and his red god. She would not be commanded back there. She grabbed her husband tightly and pressed her lips against his.

He returned the kiss with all the passion he’d kept restrained since she had found him here. Her heart beat wildly against his chest, and she could feel his doing the same. _I have a heart. I still have a heart._

His lips were warmer than anything she’d felt in a very long time and as she parted her own lips to allow his tongue entry into her mouth, she realized that his was the kiss that gave her life. This was her life now. The other had ended, and she could not have it back. Thoros could give her only a cruel imitation of life, but Ned’s kiss held the promise of whatever came next. She had only to give up the bonds tethering her to the old life, and Thoros could not take her.

With only a little reluctance, she let go of her hatred and her need for vengeance. Let the gods sort out the Freys and Boltons and Lannisters. She was far from them now. With far more reluctance and no little pain, she let go of the four children still bound to that life. She could pray for them still, she knew. And she would wait for them. However long their journey in that life lasted, she and Ned would be here when they reached its end.

When they finally ended the kiss, she looked up at him. “I made my choice, Ned,” she said once she had enough breath to form words again.

“Have you?” He looked at her with such love and hopefulness written plainly across his long, wonderful face.

“I am where I belong, Ned, as long as I am with you. And I intend to stay.”

“Forever?” he asked teasingly.

“As you long as you want me by you.”

“Forever, then,” he said firmly, offering her his arm.

She laughed and realized she could not remember the last time she had laughed for joy. She took his arm and leaned against him as they walked. “Where are you taking me, my lord?”

He smiled down at her. “Wherever you wish to go, my lady.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “I have so much to show you, my love, and now we have all the time we want.”

“That’s good. For I fear it may take me some time to adequately show you how much I’ve missed you, my lord,” she told him with an answering smile.

He stopped walking then and turned to simply look at her. “I would have waited again, Cat,” he said. “But I am beyond grateful you chose not to ask it of me.”

“I am grateful you asked me to stay,” she whispered, and she kissed him again, thinking how sweet all the kisses still ahead of them would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I've actually managed to finish a six chapter fic without turning into War and Peace! I hope you have enjoyed this little exercise in canon compliance with a wee bit of wish fulfillment in the last chapter. I love these two characters a lot, and while I truly wanted to write their experiences as they occurred in the universe of GRRM's books, I had to hold out a little bit of hope for them, if not in this world, than the next.
> 
> I appreciate every single person who reads this story, and your comments and kudos mean more to me than you could ever possibly know. THANK YOU!!

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so I'm not supposed to be doing anything except L&H and Vows, but essentially this ENTIRE THING --all 6 chapters--decided to invade my brain, so I'll be posting it fairly quickly in between working on the two big fics. Shouldn't take too much time, and it WON'T GO AWAY, so I have to write it.


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